The Week in Botany June 5, 2023
It feels like one of those weeks where, if I were feeling lazy, I could copy ‘n’ paste the New Phytologist table of contents as the week’s interesting science papers, as they’ve had a lot of attention from Twitter this week. It’s tempting as been working on a couple of projects, so see if I can still identify popular papers if/when/now Twitter is irrelevant.
It’s not just Botany One that’s been busy. Annals of Botany are setting up a new mailing list that will have information “on Calls for Papers, Special Issues, author profiles, and more!” If you’ll want to receive it, you’lll have to manually sign up for it via their form, which you can find here.
I’ve another a busy week this week, with meetings to prepare for and attend, but I expect there’ll be another email with you at the same time next week. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Machine Learning Unfolds New Insights Into Leaf Traits and Climate
A novel machine learning-based study using digitized herbarium collections provides insights into the relationship between leaf size and climate across different plant species, and demonstrates the benefit of human involvement in training the AI model.
How Soybeans Offer Solutions for Nutrient-Stressed Agriculture
Unlocking how soybeans thrive in phosphorus-poor soils could revolutionise our approach to sustainable agriculture.
How Native Plants Could Help in the Battle Against Invasive Species in Aquatic Ecosystems
Scientists discover a promising strategy to combat aquatic invasive species using the natural defences of a local plant, Ludwigia peploides.
The Silent Facilitator of Plant Invaders in Northern Chile
In the arid plains of northern Chile, exotic halophytes leverage soil salinity as a weapon to outcompete native plants, setting the stage for an ecological invasion.
How does a plant give up on love?
Over the past 100,000 years some populations of Daphne kiusiana have been moving from finding partners to self-pollinating.
News & Views
At This Staten Island Garden, the Plants Are All Queer
The Alice Austen House is celebrating the complicated and diverse sexuality of plants.
The perfect blend: how coffee farms in Costa Rica are mixing wildlife, agriculture and tourism
A new crop of farming co-ops are finding ways to safely open up untouched landscapes and exotic wildlife to visitors – and grow superb coffee.
A robot gardener outperformed human horticulturalists in one vital area
UC Berkeley researchers claim their robotic farmer passes the green thumb Turing Test.
The Trees Don’t Care About Us
Two new books scrutinize the natural world, and not for what it might offer us.
Munstead Wood, prototype of classic English garden, saved for nation
National Trust to restore Gertrude Jekyll’s ‘horticultural gem’ at Lutyens-designed home in Surrey before public opening.
How a mysterious protein plays a crucial role in plant growth
Professor Magdalena Bezanilla and senior research scientist Shu-Zon Wu, along with researchers from the University of Rhode Island, discovered how a somewhat mysterious protein known as cellulose synthase-like D, or CSLD, plays a crucial role in plant growth and is likely a generator of cellulose, which is the main structural component of all plants.
Plants can distinguish when touch starts and stops
Even without nerves, plants can sense when something touches them and when it lets go, a Washington State University-led study has found.
Kew Gardens: Endangered orchid species flowers in UK first
Dendrophylax lindenii, known as the Florida Ghost Orchid in the US and Cuba, has blossomed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, in Kew, south-west London.
Chelsea flower show garden inspires additions to pollinator-friendly plant list
Scientists monitored the Royal Entomological Society’s garden and listed its most bug-friendly plants.
Botanic gardens are art galleries of plants. Here’s what you can learn
It’s a question that has been put to Professor Tim Entwisle several times before and so he was at the ready when one of the people taking a tour of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens recently asked him why – given all the environmental crises we face – these 38 hectares of inner city space weren’t being “taken back to nature”.
Repurposing Australian tobacco plants as 'biofactories' for medicines
Professor David Craik and Dr. Mark Jackson from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience have demonstrated native wild tobacco, Nicotiana benthamiana, can potentially produce large quantities of drugs, cheaper and more sustainably than industrial manufacturing methods.
How a fungus sidesteps a plant's defense mechanism
RIKEN scientists have discovered how a parasitic fungus renders harmless a powerful anti-fungal compound produced by some plants. As well as providing a fascinating glimpse into the ongoing arms race between plants and parasites, the finding could be useful for developing new therapies for people.
Why these Sydney gardens are renaming their plants
The Botanic Gardens of Sydney is embarking on a special project to reflect the First Nations names of its plants.
The Versailles Palace Has Opened a New Perfume Flower Garden
The Versailles flower gardens were once a symbol of the French king’s expeditionary might and helped water-deprived courtiers perfume their skin. Now, they have been reimagined to give today’s public a glimpse — and a sniff — into the gilded palace’s olfactory past.
Weird, Rare, and Everywhere
In the bogs of Hecate Island, British Columbia, a writer and novice naturalist joins researchers for a glimpse of a multiyear biodiversity mission—and gets acquainted with some odd organisms.
Scientific Papers
The good, the bad, and the phosphate: regulation of beneficial and detrimental plant–microbe interactions by the plant phosphate status
Paries and Gutjahr review how the PSR pathway is involved in the regulation of genes that promote formation and maintenance of AM symbiosis.
Integrated multi-omics analysis reveals drought stress response mechanism in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)
Drought is one of the major constraints limiting chickpea productivity. To unravel complex mechanisms regulating drought response in chickpea, Kudapa et al. generated transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics datasets from root tissues of four contrasting drought-responsive chickpea genotypes: ICC 4958, JG 11, and JG 11+ (drought-tolerant), and ICC 1882 (drought-sensitive) under control and drought stress conditions.
A pathogen effector FOLD diversified in symbiotic fungi
Pathogenic fungi use secreted effector proteins to suppress immunity and support their infection, but effectors have also been reported from fungi that engage in nutritional symbioses with plants. To find sequence-divergent but structurally similar effectors shared between symbiotic and pathogenic fungi, Teuley et al. compared secreted protein structure models of the AM fungus Rhizophagus irregularis to known pathogen effectors.
Structural analysis of a hormone-bound Striga strigolactone receptor
Strigolactones (SLs) regulate many aspects of plant development, but ambiguities remain about how this hormone is perceived because SL-complexed receptor structures do not exist. Arellano-Saab et al. find that when SL binds the Striga receptor, ShHTL5, a series of conformational changes relative to the unbound state occur, but these events are not sufficient for signalling.
ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/ddJfO
The big four of plant taxonomy – a comparison of global checklists of vascular plant names
Taxonomic checklists used to verify published plant names and identify synonyms are a cornerstone of biological research. Four global authoritative checklists for vascular plants exist: Leipzig Catalogue of Vascular Plants, World Checklist of Vascular Plants, World Flora Online (successor of The Plant List, TPL), and WorldPlants. Schellenberger Costa et al. compared these four checklists in terms of size and differences across taxa.
Discovery of the Hrp Type III Secretion System in Phytopathogenic Bacteria: How Investigation of Hypersensitive Cell Death in Plants Led to a Novel Protein Injector System and a World of Inter-Organismal Molecular Interactions Within Plant Cells
Kvitko and Collmer detail the evolution of understanding Pseudomonas syringae and other phytopathogenic proteobacteria's ability to trigger rapid death in nonhost tobacco leaves, which is known as the hypersensitive reaction.
Re-examining the evidence for the mother tree hypothesis – resource sharing among trees via ectomycorrhizal networks
Henriksson et al. review the current understanding of ectomycorrhizal C metabolism and observations on forest regeneration that make the mother tree narrative debatable. They then re-examine data and conclusions from publications that underlie the mother tree hypothesis. Isotopic labeling methods are uniquely suited for studying element fluxes through ecosystems, but the complexity of mycorrhizal symbiosis, low detection limits, and small carbon discrimination in biological processes can cause researchers to make important inferences based on miniscule shifts in isotopic abundance, which can be misleading.
How to convert host plants into nonhosts
Recent research demonstrates that undermining interactions between pathogen effectors and their host target proteins can reduce infection. As more effector–target pairs are identified, their structures and interaction surfaces exposed, and there is the possibility of making multiple edits to diverse plant genomes, the desire to convert crops to nonhosts could become reality.
The contribution of plant life and growth forms to global gradients of vascular plant diversity
Using a novel dataset comprising > 295 000 species, Taylor et al. quantify the contribution of different plant forms to global gradients of vascular plant diversity. Furthermore, we establish how plant form distributions in different biogeographical regions are associated with contemporary and paleoclimate conditions, environmental heterogeneity and phylogeny.
Eyes of the world on a warmer, less frozen, and greener Arctic
Rapid atmospheric warming and sea-ice retreat are driving widespread changes in Arctic ecosystems, among the most pervasive of which is the “greening of the Arctic”—an increase in the cover and biomass of vegetation observed by satellites across much of the Arctic tundra biome.
Daytime stomatal regulation in mature temperate trees prioritizes stem rehydration at night
Trees remain sufficiently hydrated during drought by closing stomata and reducing canopy conductance (Gc) in response to variations in atmospheric water demand and soil water availability. Peters et al. investigated whether species-specific Gc responses aim to prevent branch embolisms, or enable night-time stem rehydration, which is critical for turgor-dependent growth.
Chemical ecology in conservation biocontrol: new perspectives for plant protection
Conservation biological control relies on pest control services provided by local populations of arthropod natural enemies (predators/parasitoids). To recruit and retain natural enemies to desired habitats, research has explored manipulative use of chemical information from plants and insects (chemical ecology). Kansman et al. propose conserving plant chemistry to benefit natural enemies, harnessing repellent insect-based signals, and developing genetically engineered plants that produce natural enemy attractants and/or pest repellent chemistry as future directions for conservation biological control.
Careers
PhD: How is a grass leaf patterned from its base to its tip? Edinburgh
We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD candidate to join The Plant Shape Lab, as part of the recently funded DynaLines Project. The student’s project will span multiple areas of the DyanLines Project, aiming to discover key genes that control specification of the different domains in the maize leaf, and test their evolutionary conservation. In particular the student will use next generation sequencing to map a maize mutant that has defects in leaf domain specification, and use a range of microscopy and molecular biology approaches to characterise how the causal mutation affects gene function.
Research Biologist, Madison WI
This scientist is assigned to collaborative research and development activities focused on the improvement of management decisions for reducing the negative impacts of forest and wildlife disease and other forest health issues related to high-priority fungi.
Group Leader Tropical Botany, Leiden
We are seeking an enthusiastic, ambitious, innovative senior scientist to fulfill the role of Groupleader for the research group Tropical Botany. A strong representative within and outside Naturalis with a worldwide (scientific) botanical network (incl. herbaria). An inspiring and stimulating leader and team player with a clear (long term) vision. An excellent experienced senior researcher with a strong scientific background in taxonomy/ systematics in Southeast Asia, who brings innovative technologies to improve taxonomy (e.g. phylogeny and state-of-the-art techniques such as DNA, image recognition, infrared scanning) and has field work experience.
Postdoc opportunity with Elizabete, Lancaster
This Plant Physiologist postdoc role is part of the BBSRC Institute Strategic Programme Delivering Sustainable Wheat, this project aims to decipher the mechanistic regulation of Rubisco synthesis and degradation and how this process impacts photosynthetic efficiency and nitrogen use efficiency in wheat. The wider project goal is to contribute to optimising the wheat canopy function and interactions between source and sink. Initially for 3 years, there is the potential to extend this position.
Senior Staff Scientist Proteomics, Wageningen
We are looking for a Staff Scientist Proteomics. The staff scientist Proteomics will, in consultation with and at the request of the Assistant / Associate Professors, spearhead the proteomics activities at the Laboratory of Biochemistry (BIC) with the aim to boost our technological and computational capabilities and establish BIC as a proteomics center-of-expertise.
PhD: Climate change reduces the nutritional value of food crops, Liverpool
This research will incorporate a novel cross disciplinary approach that combines plant physiology, biochemistry, and human nutrition to investigate the nutritional quality of these stressed plants from quantification of the changes to the quality of the leaves, yield, and photosynthetic performance, to how these components can be digested by the human body, using a novel artificial digestion system. We will also investigate how climate induced changes to plant nutritional quality affect our cells using an animal free, cell culture model.
Research Scientist – Plant Systems Biology, Jülich
If you`re passionate about establishing part of the data relationship life cycle for plant science, we invite you to join the Bioinformatics subinstitute (IBG-4) at the Institute of Bio- and Geosciences at Forschungszentrum Jülich. IBG-4, led by Prof. Dr. Usadel, focuses on knowledge management, data integration, classical bioinformatics, and machine learning, especially for predicting phenotypes on biological questions concerning transcriptional reprogramming of plants during abiotic stress response, identifying metabolic pathways for secondary metabolites, and understanding plant cell wall biosynthesis.
Bioinformatics Scientist, Green (Crop) Engineering, Rothamsted
The post holder will work closely with a team of lab-based researchers to manage, process and analyse long and short read sequencing data as well as transcriptomic, lipidomic and proteomic data from oilseed crops. We are looking for applicants with an MSc or PhD in bioinformatics, or similar area, with experience in conducting advanced genomic analyses.
PhD position in plant science with focus on conifer genomics, Umeå
Transposable elements (TEs), major component of most plant genomes, are active and dynamic component of genome structural and functional variation and evolution. Tremendous advancements in molecular biology, genomics, and genetics have disclosed various features and roles of TEs. However, accurate and efficient tools for TEs annotation, classification, movement, lateral transfer, recombination, and evolution are still lacking or not efficacious enough especially for complex genomes, like that of conifers. The PhD project focuses on TE biology and the development of new computational tool.
Postdoc or Staff Computational Biologist: Quantitative Evolutionary Genomics and Ecology in Plants, Stanford
We aim to recruit a highly motivated and skillful postdoc or staff computational biologist with training in evolutionary quantitative genomics and bioinformatics. We seek to understand the impacts of climate change on plant species from a genomics angle. Potential projects include study of large-scale Evolve & Resequence data to understand rapid adaptation (GrENE-net.org), meta-analysing global population genomic datasets (see MAR), leveraging common gardens and genomics to understanding genetic and demographic drivers of population extinction.
Postdoc: The Genetics of Dehydration Tolerance in Plants, Stanford
We aim to recruit a highly motivated and skillful researcher with training in genetics, molecular biology, or bioengineering, with strong interest in evolution. As part of the WALII.science NSF biological integration, we seek to understand the genetics of plant dehydration tolerance in plants using Arabidopsis thaliana and other species as model systems, with an eye to study the impacts of climate change on plant species from a molecular evolution angle. This project will leverage field experiments, screening of natural variation and gene knock-outs or knock-ins in seeds or other tissues with strong dehydration characteristics.
Research Assistant: Next Generation Sequencing and CRISPR in Plants, Stanford
We aim to recruit a highly motivated and skillful researcher with training in molecular biology, plant genetics, or bioengineering. We seek to understand the impacts of climate change on plant species from a molecular evolution angle. The project will leverage ecological genomics modeling to identify genes involved in dehydration tolerance and water use efficiency in Arabidopsis, and use CRISPR-based genetic engineering, developmental genetics, and microscopy techniques to understand the molecular mechanism of such adaptive genes.
Lab Manager of the MOILAB, Stanford
We aim to recruit a highly motivated and skillful researcher with training in plant genetics broadly defined, with interests in a career of laboratory and project management. Our lab seeks to understand the impacts of climate change on plant species, from a genetic angle.